Language Issue in Wide Sargasso Sea

      Language issue in Wide Sargasso Sea is very important because through this we can understand to which class someone belongs and what the life conditions are and this book is one of the best examples about colonization and how the life in colonized country is both for the colonizer and the colonized.

      When we look at the main character Antoinette, she is born in Jamaica and that is why she is considered as Creole. Her mother Annette was born in Jamaica, too. Both of them have French names but have never been to France. This shows us that their family belongs to the early colonizer who came to Jamaica. With Antoinette we are much closer to the natives than Marlow because he has been in Congo just for a short time but Antoinette was born in Jamaica, so she gives us more accurate details than Marlow. As her father has died and her mother has become ignorant she lacks a role model and that is why she has began to quote the black characters. She has a black friend called Tia but this friendship does not last long. Tia becomes her role model. Imitating a black girl is the situation of going natives. She does not only behave like the natives but also speaks like them. Antoinette also shows us how the family is disconnected with the others in the town. As their life condition is not as it used to be the natives call them white niggers. This shows us that they are not only looked down by the other white rich people but also by the natives, too. Antoinette also takes Christophine as her role model who is a black servant. As her mother neglects her she tries to find intimacy from Christophine who really cares for Antoinette but has not too much time for her. She does not talk English in a proper way. Actually the blacks speak creole and Antoinette can speak creole, too. In the second part of the book we can see it. This shows us that even though she has been educated in a convent she still behaves like the natives as she wishes. Creole is not seen or regarded as a proper language. I also want to mention her mother’s parrot Coco. It can speak French which was one of the lofty languages of the time and this means that it is an educated parrot as not everyone can speak French.

     When I look at the language issue than I think that Antoinette has the ability to adapt herself both to the people which belong to her class and also to the natives because she speaks both English and Creole. Antoinette is really fond of Jamaica and does not want to live elsewhere. She also does not look down on her servants and treats them in a kind way which shows that she is not like her ancestors who treated the natives in a bad way. She has become a part of the country and the natives.

                      HEART of DARKNESS, A SEMI-BIOGRAPHY OF CONRAD

      When I read Chapter 5 from W. G. Sebald’s prose work, Rings and Saturn, I immediately realized that some of Joseph Conrad’s background can be found in Heart of Darkness. He himself went to Congo and we can see that he made Marlow his mouthpiece in the novella.

Conrad was born in Ukraine which once belonged to Poland. His father had been sent to exile after being discovered that he belonged to a group called anti-Russian rebellion, so in a way Conrad knew what being colonized means.

      Like Marlow, Conrad applied for a job in a Belgian company to go for Congo and got the job immediately for one of the captains had been killed by the natives. “I got my appointment – of course; and I got it very quick. It appears the Company had received news that one of their captains had been killed in a scuffle with the natives.” Like Conrad, Marlow has an aunt, too, to whom he writes. As a child Conrad wanted to go to Congo and he made this dream appear in Marlow: “Now when I was a little chap I had a passion for maps. I would look for hours at South America, or Africa, or Australia, and lose myself in all the glories of exploration…But there was one yet – the biggest, the most blank, so to speak – that I had a hankering after.” Another incident that Conrad tells through Marlow is “Black shapes crouched, lay, sat between the trees, leaning against the trunks, clinging to the earth, half coming out, half effaced within the dim light, in all the attitudes of pain, abandonment, and despair. Another mine on the cliff went off, followed by a slight shudder of the soil under my feet. The work was going on. The work! And this was the place where some of the helpers had withdrawn to die. They were dying slowly – it was very clear. They were not enemies, they were not criminals, they were nothing earthly now, - nothing but black shadows of disease and starvation, lying confusedly in the greenish gloom. Brought from all the recesses of the coast in all the legality of time contracts, lost in uncongenial surroundings, fed on unfamiliar food, they sickened, became inefficient, and were then allowed to crawl away and rest. These moribund shapes were free as air – and nearly as thin. I began to distinguish the gleam of the eyes under the tree.” I think this quotation is very important because here we can see Conrad’s feelings towards the indigenous people. He sees them as his equal and also criticises imperialism. Conrad had to walk for well – nigh forty days with a caravan of thirty – one men. A Frenchman fainted all the time, so they had to carry him in a hammock. In Heart of Darkness we can find a similar passage: “Next day I left that station at last, with a caravan of sixty men, for a two – hundred – mile tramp… I had a white companion too, not a bad chap, but rather too fleshy…Then he got fever, and had to be carried in a hammock.”

      After having a deeper background about Conrad’s life, I think he criticised the European imperialism because in Congo he saw their behaviours. That is why he wrote Heart of Darkness in order to show how the Europeans brought civilization to the indigenous people.

                                TWO VISIONS IN HEART of DARKNESS

      When I read Edward Said’s essay about Heart of Darkness, I realised that Said not only

mentions his critic about the novel but also we can see Conrad through Said’s eyes. Said sees

him differently than the other colonial writers of his time because he has been self-conscious of his actions and these has been expressed through Marlow. In Conrad’s time, independence was for whites and Europeans, while oppression and slavery was for those considered inferior.

     Said sees this novel as an imperialist text because he says that “politics and aesthetics are, so to speak, imperialist.” It is a way of suggesting that Conrad’s style reflects his political philosophy, but I do not agree with Said for I think that Conrad wanted to show how imperialism works and he has been very realistic while describing the environment, the natives and the Europeans, for example: “When one has got to make correct entries,  one comes to hate those savages- hate them to the death.” (pg.47) The clerk says this to Marlow, when they encounter for the first time. Here we see the Europeans feelings towards the natives. Also we can see how the Europeans treat them. “Black shapes crouched, lay, sat between the trees, leaning against the trunks, clinging to the earth, half coming out, half effaced within the dim light, in all the attitudes of pain, abandonment, and despair. Another mine on the cliff went off, followed by a slight shudder of the soil under my feet. The work was going on. The work! And this was the place where some of the helpers had withdrawn to die.” This passage is a good example of the treatments of the natives. Nobody cares if when they die. They are treated like animals. Marlow describes the behaviours as the natives as “they howled and leaped, spun, and made horrid faces.” These passages that I have quoted seems to me very realistic and that is why I do not agree that is an imperialist text. Conrad’s Heart of Darkness is all about Europe’s brutal mission to colonize the dark world.

      In his essay, Said has made two arguments. The first one is that even though the Europeans have withdrew from Africa and Asia, they still retained rule over the markets, morals, and education in these places and I agree with Said. We can still encounter many traces of Europeans in these countries, although they seemed to left their colonies. Now they say that we are just helping them to develop. The second argument claims that imperialism was something for the 19^th century and not something that would continue even in the post-colonial world. This argument also says that imperialism, like everything else in the world, had its time of popularity and it eventually passed. As I stated before now developed countries colonize the countries they want by saying we are helping them developing themselves. This is just a modern word for imperialism and so they continue to exploit these countries according to their benefits.

       In Argumentum apologiae Las Casas tries to prove why the Amerindians are not barbarians, but before that we have to understand what Aristotle means by “barbarian” when he used that word. In the first book of Politics he defines barbarian as natural slaves.

However, in the third book he says that barbarians are those, who are not greek.

       Las Casas makes his argument by saying that the term barbarian can be examined in four types. The first one applies to individualism. The second type is about language because according to Las Casas, those who can communicate cannot be classified as barbarians and when you have a language you are social, but also written word is important because it makes you progress and this shows your acess to knowledge. As the Amerindians had no written texts, they were regarded as barbarians, but the chieftains did not need any written law in order to rule because they guided them “like elder relatives and the fathers of families”. Thirdly, Las Casas ays that if someone is impious, perverse, savage, ferocious, slow witted and alien to all reason than this person is barbarious because they cannot live in a society and if they do, they will be a hazard to their enviroment. The final category of barbarian is described as to non-Chriatians. Again the Amerindians cannot be described as barbarians because to be a Christian does not mean that you are civil as in the example of  “The Devastation of the Indies: A Brief Account”. There the Chriatian amde a massacre.

     In my opinion these four categories are true because if even one of these criterias do not suit you, you cannot be labbeld as a barbarian and the Amerindians had their own life style, cities, rules laws etc. when we think back, we will realize that the Europeans used to be like the Amerindians because they ,too, sacrified humans even though they call it barbarism, but when they slaughter people that is normal. Also they did not have any written texts or any monotheist religion.

THE DEVASTATION OF THE INDİES

When I read “The Devastation of the Indies: A Brief Account” by Bartolome de las Casas, I got horriefied. What the Spaniards did is a genocide of the Indies and these people call themselves Chriatians. In the Ten Commandments it is clearly stated that you shall not kill but what did this people do, they tortured them before killing. From more than three million people just two hundred remained. The raeson for killing these people is not because the Indies did wrong to the Spaniards, but because of their being greedy. They wanted their lands, their foods, their gold, and their wives. In the article on page six, it is described, how the Spaniards killed the Indians. They killed everyone: men, women, children, babies, the olds etc. they had no mercy.They dismembered and cut them into pieces which is barbarous. What is strange to me is that these people went to the churces, prayed, confessed their sins to the priest, and prayed for mercy, but these people were also able to kill for God’s sake. In my opnion, they treated animals better than these people. They also converted these people into Christians. How did they believe that the Indians would believe in their religion after witnessing their crulty their barbarity.

 I also want to make a reference to Moliere’s “Of Cannibals.” On page six and seven it is descriebed that what the so-called cannibals do with  their prisoners. First of all, they feed them very good and then they invite their friends to eat the prisoner. To eat a person is abnormal to us, but what the Spaniards did with the Indies is unhumanly. They boiled the babies or drowned them in the rivers and burned the people and this is not cannibalism for them. I think we should be careful about using the word cannibal and barbarian because as we can see here the cannibals are the Spaniards.